Along the Path

We found shelter from a steady downpour beneath the overhang of the Shulerville used oil recycling center. Katie and I managed to exchanged soaked capilene for dryer materials from our packs without scandalizing any passersby, and then we waited for our new friend, Douglas Guerry, to drive by to pick us up.

I had heard from Douglas during the previous segment of the trip. Douglas was a descendant of one of the original settlers, Pierre Guerry, one of the original Huguenots who settled the lower Santee in the 1680s. He wondered whether as I approached Jamestown, currently mainly a crossroads near the end of my trail in the Francis Marion National Forest, would I like to see the site of the original town of the French Huguenots among whom Lawson spent a few days, the site now owned by the Huguenot Society of South Carolina.

Well, yes, I would.So we kept in touch, and when I headed down for the next segment we texted back and forth. I have lived in two countries and eight states, so the idea of spending time with a man who was born not two miles from where his great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather hacked his home site out of raw forest was very exciting. Plus, like Lawson, I was traveling through to see what I could see; like the Huguenots of 1700, he was offering hospitality. It sounded like a fit.Ecologist Katie Winsett and I planned to meet him on the second afternoon of our hike. We awoke that morning in our Francis Marion State Forest campsite and began our day by finding our complicated way to what are called the Blue Springs, one of the sources of the Echaw Creek that eventually feeds the Santee River. The springs are not on the map, and the roads through the forest are anybody’s guess, though with enough maps and texts we found them. Though the swamp was too high for the springs to be blue, we did find the swamp, perhaps the loveliest of the cypress-tupelo swamps in the forest. Katie has been astonished at how similar these swamps are to the ones she's studied in Texas and hopes to compare them. The wide bells of the cypress trunks, the knobby knees emerging out of the black water like serpents, the swaying spanish moss all made this one seem like a swamp right out of central casting. We refilled our water jugs.

An absolutely breathtaking cypress-tupelo swamp. Lawson never mentions how beautiful they are. Then again, Lawson didn't have gore tex boots.

From there we made our way down forest roads deeper into the woods, through a stand of longleaf pine as lovely as any we'd ever seen. Katie teaches a trick in a stand of longleaf or any fire-managed trees: allow your eyes to lose their focus and see the fire line emerge. The trick works just as well in the swamps -- allow your eyes to relax and there's the water line, the highest level the water commonly reaches. You can tell by where the moss ends, but the tree trunks change, the color of the bark lightens, too. Learn the trick and you begin not just to see but to perceive.

Let your eyes relax and there it is -- the water line, about two-thirds of the way up the picture where the tree trunks get light.

What causes the swamps to rise is of course rain, and rain we'd had plenty of the night before -- and the area had had for the last few weeks. So we kvelled over the swamp, took pictures, absorbed the water line, and as the rain began again, instead of turning deeper into the forest for more exploration we started heading out to the road, where we could message Douglas, who planned to take us to see the Huguenot memorial at the site of the original town.

We know Lawson went to the original town only because he mentions it in a backhanded way. Across the Santee from the Huguenot town, he mentions that his group "lay all Night at a House which was built for the Indian Trade, the Master thereof we had parted with at the French Town, who gave us Leave to make use of his Mansion." So Lawson must have been to the French town, though he found nothing there worthy of note. He does tell us the French settlers treat him and his friends very courteously: "a very kind, loving, and affable People, who wish'd us a safe and prosperous Voyage." The French ferry him across the limitless creeks through the swamp in dories, feed him and offer nights' lodging. We've already had enormous assistance from our friends Cheves Leland and Susan Bates of the Huguenot Society, so we were excited to meet Douglas and continue the tradition of kindness to wanderers by Huguenots. We emerged from the forest road looking for shelter, and found it at the oil recycling station.Douglas drove up twenty minutes later, with his brother, Mark, and his mom, Jean, in the car with him. They piled cheerfully out and announced that we wouldn't be able to see the original plot of land after all -- it's right on the Santee River, but surrounded on all sides by another property owner who is touchy about people crossing his land. About what may cause the owner to fear for the outcome if we were allowed to cross his land you may draw your own conclusions.

That's Mark Guerry to the left, Jean in the middle, and Douglas on the right. It was because Douglas reached out that we got to have a wonderful time with the Guerry family -- and a dry night in the St. James United Methodist Church.

Anyhow, the rain stopped and we stood in the parking lot with the Guerrys, chatting about the Huguenots and three centuries of hanging around in the same spot. Mark, 57 and working in the energy industry, figures the French Huguenots ended up on the Santee because the English didn't want them in Charleston. "They said, we'll send you up here, and you fight the Indians and the Spanish." The Huguenots, Protestant refugees from religious persecution in Catholic France, surprised them by surviving -- and, in fact, thriving. In the very preface to his book Lawson describes French industry and capability: “In this Point, the French outstrip us,” he says of observation, but his passage praises the French highly. The Huguenot Society in South Carolina is proud of its heritage, and Douglas is a member. He’s a ninth-generation resident, he said, and when my eyebrows shot up, Jean smiled: “The Guerrys are long-lived.” To be sure.

We conversed briefly about the history of the Santee River. Its waters were mostly diverted into the Cooper, towards Charleston, in the 1940s, creating Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion, but the diversion compromised the Santee ecosystem and filled Charleston Harbor with silt. A rediversion canal was built in the 1980s, which is helping, but the mingled waters of the Santee and the Cooper will never be the same as the rowdy, untamed Santee floods Lawson describes. Steamboats plied the Santee until the lakes were built. About the family denying us access to the Huguenot site Jean said only of their tenure in the community, “They’re not old.” She narrowed her eyes and nodded: “I know.” And mind you, Jean is herself a relative newcomer: she can trace her family only back to 1720 -- she’s the longest-standing member of the South Carolina Historical Society, but she hasn’t made the cut for the Huguenot Society, though her sons have, on account of their father. And when our good friend and sometime guide Eddie Stroman from McClellanville stopped by, it took her only a moment to connect with his people and place him with approval. So if Jean says a family isn’t old enough for her, Jean gets the win.

Then she invited us over for cake and coffee.

Yes, yes, Lawson had it good with the French Huguenots and the Indians. I think Katie and I had it pretty good with the Huguenot descendants. Lawson never says a word about bundt cake.

She brought us into her immaculately clean home: wide hardwood floors, oriental rugs, traditional wooden furniture. Even the books on the bookshelves were neat, though the copy of Lawson Jean had been reading in preparation for our meeting lay open on the sofa.Jean made us coffee and brought out a bundt cake. “Welcome to Jamestown,” Douglas had said, “population 74 -- when Mark and I come home it goes up to 76.” We had a lovely time. We discussed that in South Carolina, whose legal system is based on English Common Law, only the coroner is empowered to arrest the sheriff -- regrettably, the point had become germane recently. We talked about whether the misguided commingling of the waters of the Cooper and the Santee hadn’t accidentally protected the Santee from development, keeping much of the land of the national forest pristine. We talked about the area churches -- the first recorded Episcopal clergy appeared in 1687 (Lawson talks of being assisted across the creeks by “very officious” French settlers, “whom we met coming from their Church”), though no trace of that church remains. A newer one went up on the old Georgetown road in 1768 -- it’s a red brick church that still stands on the old dirt road, with lovely cylindrical brick columns and cypress pew boxes. Jean told us that in its early days mistrust between the French and English settlers obtained: “the Huguenots used the back door -- the English used the front.” We discussed the Peachtree Oak, a live oak hundreds of years old on the nearby Peachtree Plantation, which stood until the 1930s, when it died. “If it hadn’t,” Jean said, “Hugo would have got it.” You can’t talk for more than 15 minutes in South Carolina without Hurricane Hugo coming up.

Anyhow. We probably stayed with Jean and Douglas and Mark (and Mark’s daughter, who showed up for a bit) for a couple hours. We ate cake and drank coffee, and we even chatted about political and social topics about which we very agreeable didn’t particularly agree. I would call it one my most delightful afternoons ever -- exactly what I left home for. Probably why Lawson left home, too.

We loved the St. James United Methodist Church as a place to eat and sleep. When the skies opened up in the middle of the night we appreciated it even more. Thank you, St. James United Methodist Church!

Jean and Douglas opened up the St. James United Methodist Church around the corner for us, where warm and dry we planned out our next day’s walk and slept in comfort on padded pews. Along with the delightful Nina Gilbert, who had allowed us to park Katie’s car during our trek in front of her church in the tiny SC burg of Lane, the Lawson Trek felt plenty of love from the churches of the lowlands this time -- more than enough to offset our sadness at people closing their land to us or fencing in an area we had hoped to traverse. When the skies opened that night and the church protected us from the downpour, we were pleased to note that one of our correspondents cited Psalm 55, verse 8, “I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest.” As we stopped to take a picture on our way out the next morning, Jean’s sister pulled up to meet Jean for church. She showed us a picture of her great grandchild, Malachi James, born in December. That makes him a Lawson Trek baby, and we hope the hospitality his ancestors showed rebounds to him all his life. Jean’s sister, by the way, introduced herself as Hazel. “Hazel Hughes,” she said. “No kin to Howard.” Rich just the same, if you ask us.

Hazel Hughes and young Malachi James. Welcome to the world, Malachi James! The Lawson Trek wishes you the results of the hospitality of your ancestors. Times a million.

Like Lawson, I spent the first week of my trek in a canoe, making my way among the Spartina and tidal creeks along the South Carolina shore. But following that, our paths have briefly diverged. Lawson continued directly on, walking for nearly two months until he finished his journey in what is now Washington, NC.But Lawson, as I tell people, did not have teacher conferences to manage and recycling to separate and Sunday school carpool to organize. So I’m going about this piecemeal. My next segment of the main trek will be through the Francis Marion National Forest, though I’m being hugely careful to make sure I avoid the part of deer hunting season where they chase the deer with dogs. I’m all good with hunting and hope an orange vest will keep me safe from responsible hunters, but on the days they let the dogs out, I prefer to be in.

That said, there are plenty of outings to make in the meantime. I got to make a weird bookend to my beginning trip by visiting the town of Grifton, NC, which Nov. 7 and 8 celebrated John Lawson Legacy Days, which commemorate Lawson’s awful death at the hands of the Tuscarora Indians ten years after his famous journey. So inside of a few weeks I’ve retraced Lawson’s first steps and his last.

You can get a little more detail on Lawson's demise here -- his actual death came sometime in the middle of September, 1711. He and Baron von Graffenreid, with whom he was developing the town of New Bern at the mouth of the Neuse River, decided to take a journey up the Neuse in search of a better trade route to Virginia. One member of their party scouting ahead stumbled into Catchna, a Tuscarora settlement, where the Tuscarora were organizing the raids they planned to begin September 22. The Tuscarora had given up on either going along with the English or moving away and figured that it was time to stand and fight. Though Lawson showing up on their doorstep made him the Tuscarora War's first casualty, as an agent of the changes that were destroying their lives, Lawson likely had a target on his back either way.

Um, you guys! Hi! We were, um, just coming up to check and see how you're doing! We brought Doritos! You guys? Aw, hell.

The area that archaeologists think was Catechna has everything you'd want in a settlement: clear access to the river, high spots that stay dry, a small creek useful for gathering water. Yet what was most powerful about the spot came later, when the entire festival hiked out to the spot and placed a magnolia wreath there. "In Memory & Honor of All Those Who Came Before," it said. "May they rest in Peace." Standing on one side, dressed much as Lawson would have been dressed, was Wayne Hardee, who manages the Grifton Museum and has helped organize the festival for all of its four years. Standing on the other side was Vince Schiffert -- a descendant of the Tuscarora people, down from New York state, where much that remained of the tribe relocated after their inevitable devastation in the war that began with Lawson's death. The moment of silence all observed was a sweet end to the day. Vince hopes to walk with me on part of the trek, and I very much hope he -- and any compatriots he cares to bring -- do join me. The descendants of the settlers and the descendants of the Tuscarora very much seem to consider themselves part of the same community, which was, after all, what Lawson himself had originally hoped for, advocating marriage between settlers and natives as a way of combining the two cultures to the advantage of each:

Wayne Hardee, president of the Grifton Historical Museum, dressed not unlike Lawson would have dressed in the early 1700s. I love the hat; Lawson probably didn't have the watch, though.

The thing I enjoyed most from Lawson Legacy Days was the boat trip up the Contentnea Creek to what archaeologists are beginning to agree is the site of Catechna. Tim Bright, a resident of Grifton, ran a small boat up the Contentnea, past stands of ancient bald cypress old enough that Lawson likely saw them. Bald cypress doesn't grow terribly high, but you can estimate age by girth (kind of like people, huh). As we putted along, Tim constantly said: "TELL me that tree's not 300 years old." I never did.

On the right, Wayne Hardee of the Grifton Museum, in Lawson-era garb; on the left, Vince Schiffert of the Tuscarora nation. At the spot where Lawson may well have been killed, a moment of silence.

They tell me you gauge bald cyprus age by girth, not height. This one's been around a while.

Again -- Lawson wanted to turn the Indians into Europeans, so it’s not like he was a saint, and he hoped intermarriage would help settlers learn the local terrain and customs, too, so he was mostly merely pragmatic. But instead of slaughtering the Native Americans Lawson thought settlers ought to marry them; it’s rather a significant difference. One can wonder how that would have worked had it been tried.

Lawson Legacy Days had otherwise been dedicated to the cultures of both Lawson and the Tuscarora. A small longhouse in the Tuscarora style stands on the shore of the creek where one might have stood 300 years ago, and among other qualities it shows how the tribe used bark, peeled in full diameters from trees, to roof their huts. Among the drawings of such huts that we still have is that by Von Graffenreid himself, and the one at Grifton looks exactly right; it helped me finally understand something I'd had a hard time imagining.

Most satisfactorily, he demonstrated how to make fire with only sticks, bending a stick into a bow, adding a piece of string, and winding the string around another piece, which he then spun in a depression in a third piece. Friction caused smoke within a few strokes of the bow, he caught the spark in some tinder, and he had flames inside of half a minute. It was remarkable to see it work, reminding me that though the matches and lighters and firestarters modern campers take for granted make fire simple, people have been starting fires for a long time. Lawson and those like him could start fires with relative ease, even without Piggy’s glasses from Lord of the Flies. I hope to try it myself one trip (though as a backup I do in fact wear very strong glasses).

Anyhow. Lawson’s been dead a long time, and the Tuscarora have been around for longer. Lawson Legacy Days started in 2011, the 300th anniversary of Lawson’s death. I expect I'll be there next year too. Maybe I'll walk.

Lawson describes Indian houses as covered in bark, and I had the worst time imagining what he meant. Now I get it.

Joe Herbert demonstrated traditional pottery methods, making and firing pots using native clay and a fire; Schiffert told the story of how the Tuscarora originally separated from their Iroquois family when a grapevine that was helping them across the Mississippi River broke. Tom Magnuson of the Trading Path Association described ancient pathways and roads.

Hardee and others kept a fire burning in a dugout canoe they were working on, and next to it sat another one, all but finished. At one point the fire went out, and I rebuilt it, blowing it to life; I also used an oyster shell to dig out some of the char. An expert in historic technology, Scott Jones of Media Prehistoria, demonstrated how to chip out a projectile point, then explained the progress from the spear to the atlatl to the bow and arrow, with a small side trip to the blow gun (hollow river cane, sharp thorn or piece of bone or antler, fuzzy cattail for its feathery back -- shockingly simple).

This little depression might have provided easy access to water so the Tuscarora would not have had to go directly to the Contentnea. Some think Contentnea is how the word "Catechna" has come down over three centuries.